The last holiday book. I have read this before but couldn’t remember much.
It is a love triangle between Charlie, a washed-out British diplomat in Washington in 1960, his wife Mary, and Frank, a US journalist who is covering the Kennedy/Nixon presidential election.
They meet at a party hosted by Charlie and Mary, and Frank is so smitten with Mary that he feigns an accident as he is leaving, so as to be invited back in.
Their affair isn’t exactly stormy, but rather tortured and guilt-ridden on Mary’s part, particularly as Charlie's alcohol-fuelled life disintegrates. They decide, eventually, to part, as the options are family and commitments or Frank and a new life for her, and they both know that the latter is not possible.
It is an odd and almost old-fashioned book really — their final hours (apart, she en route for the airport and he in the belated pursuit) are both poignant and quite funny.
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